My mother Bette Davis, the drunken monster who cast a demonic curse on her own family
Reigniting the most toxic mother-daughter feud in Hollywood, the screen legend’s daughter talks to the Mail
Bette Davis would probably have been burned as a witch if she had lived two or three hundred years ago. she gives the curious feeling of being charged with power which can find no ordinary outlet.’
so wrote the influential British film critic e. arnot Robertson in 1935 after the fledgling star, then 26, gave the first of the famously intense performances that would become her hallmark, in a film called Dangerous. and Davis enthusiastically embraced the idea that there was something of the night about her.
she would tell interviewers that not only was she born near salem in Massachusetts — site of the notorious witch trials in the 17th century — but that she was actually descended from one of the women, Mary Bradbury, who was convicted of ‘Certaine Detestable arts’, including taking animal form and casting evil spells on ships. she, herself, came into the world like a witch, Davis told a biographer, claiming: ‘a bolt of lightning hit a tree in front of the house the moment i was born.’
it was, everyone assumed, Hollywood hokum aimed at bolstering the star’s image as a fierce and unconventional screen icon who refused to conform. Few took it seriously, least of all, one imagined, Bette Davis herself.
But that assumption is misplaced, according to astonishing new allegations from the star’s only natural child, Barbara Hyman. as Mrs Hyman — known as ‘B.D’ or ‘Bede’ — told me this week, her manipulative and hard-drinking mother Bette did indeed believe she was a witch, and would cast spells on her enemies from her bed. Not only that, she claims she once saw her mother transform into an ‘evil, demonic presence’. Bede, now 70, is speaking out following publication of a book written by Davis’s former personal assistant in her later years that aims to rescue the star’s reputation — a reputation that has been repeatedly tarnished over the years by her estranged daughter.
in Miss D and Me: Life With the invincible Bette Davis, Kathryn sermak portrays the star of classics such as all about eve, Now, voyager and What ever Happened to Baby Jane?, as eccentric and strong-willed but possessed of a ‘heart of gold’.
the affectionate portrait by sermak who became, in effect, the actress’s surrogate daughter and was left much of her fortune, is at odds with Bede’s devastating claim, which first emerged nearly 30 years ago, that her mother was a violent alcoholic who staged fake suicides to scare her children and encouraged her underage daughter to pursue a sex life. three decades after her mother’s death, Bede is still engaged in what must surely be the most prolonged mother-daughter feud in Hollywood history.
Now running her own Christian mission from her virginia home, Bede claims she and her family were among many victims of Davis’s black magic.
she says her mother was so possessive that she couldn’t tolerate her marriage — aged just 16 — in 1963 to British film executive, Jeremy Hyman, 13 years her senior.
UNABLE to persuade her daughter to leave Hyman, the actress apparently placed a ‘ demonic’ curse on their family that led to their older son developing bipolar disorder and Bede being diagnosed with ‘terminal’ cancer, which she miraculously survived.
‘it happened for many years,’ Bede said. ‘Mother operated heavily in the occult. Her own mother said she was evil from day one. she loved evil and hated everything nice and kind and gentle. she did a great many people a great deal of harm.’
Bede insists a succession of Davis’s staff knew about her interest in black magic but, if not actively involved in assisting her, chose to keep quiet.
interestingly, there is nothing about witchcraft in Bede’s 1985 memoir, My Mother’s Keeper. she says now she has a Christian ministry, she wants to warn her flock about the occult.
‘it all sounds ridiculous unless you understand these things from a Christian standpoint,’ she said. indeed. in one of many video ‘testimonies’ she has released on Youtube for fellow Christians, Bede recounts how her mother ‘would sit on her bed’ and cast spells.
‘she had this big metal waste basket and she would have her secretary get a piece of clothing from someone who had vexed her, crossed her in her view,’ she claims.
‘she would take this piece of clothing and she would mumble incoherently and she would then set it on fire and hold it over this metal waste basket, and laugh as it burned and she dropped it into this container.’
she also recounted how her mother would buy fish whole so she could gut them, ripping their innards out as she mumbled the names of people she wished to do the same to.
although ‘ people’s lives were destroyed’ and ‘all sorts of horrible things happened to them’, Bede says she didn’t understand it all until she became a Christian at 36.
even more dramatically, she also relates how one night, at Davis’s Beverly Hills mansion in 1984, she watched her mother go through occult rituals in a ‘last-ditch attempt’ to make Bede ‘run back to her’.
Lying in bed, she says she suddenly felt tremendously scared. as she locked the French doors to the terrace, Davis appeared on the balcony and rattled the doors.
‘she began demonic cackling and i watched her transform into a satanic figure — a satanic face, long claws on the ends of her hands as she scraped at the glass,’ Bede said.
so far, so incredible. Many will reject her jaw- dropping claims as selfdelusion, borne of her born-again Christianity, or continued desperate attempts to ensure her mother’s reputation remains blackened.
Davis certainly paid a heavy price for falling out with her daughter, the product of her short- lived third marriage to artist William sherry.
Hollywood was transfixed by the extent to which a woman widely hailed as one of the greatest screen actresses could be so humiliated — by a daughter prepared to plunge the knife while the star was still alive.
their bitter relationship is, says Bede, rooted in a traumatic childhood and a neglectful, foul-mouthed, pugnacious and egomaniacal mother who was habitually drunk by 10 am.
the mean- spirited and neurotic Davis was, she claims, emotionally cruel, and staged ‘suicides’ to punish her children — she adopted two others, a son and a disabled daughter — for perceived slights.
When Bede was eight, she claims Davis pretended to take an overdose, locking herself in her bedroom. Distraught, the little girl slept outside her door, waking the next morning to find her mother staring down on her looking ‘triumphant’.
she told her: ‘i hope that taught you a good lesson.’
Bede claims her mother had been a 24-year-old virgin when she married first husband, Harmon Nelson, in 1932. Despite three subsequent marriages, Bede says Davis regretted her lack of sexual experience in her early 20s, and had lived vicariously through Bede’s sex life, quizzing her incessantly for lurid details.
ONCE, after a 15-year- old Bede came home from a date with the actor George Hamilton, her mother asked her: ‘Well? Did he lay you?’ When her daughter refused to answer, the actress supposedly snapped back: ‘Well, he better had.’
Bede also claimed her stepfather, Davis’s fourth husband, the actor Gary Merrill, was violent towards mother and daughter.
at the time she wrote her memoir, Bede claimed — somewhat unconvincingly —that she did it because ‘i love my mother and i want to reach her’ in a way she couldn’t ignore.
Davis implied it was all fiction — but that wasn’t entirely true. Merrill, who had walked out on Davis when their daughter was an infant, corroborated
her allegations about Davis’s drinking — downing a bottle of whisky in a night — and her maternal coldness.
‘I never saw her hug or rock B.D,’ he said. ‘She’d visit with her for a while then call over the governess.’ He also admitted they used to drink heavily together and fight.
In sharp contrast, Kathryn Sermak’s new book paints a rosy portrait of Davis, skating over her personal failings, and there’s not a hint of black magic.
Yet there are substantial clues as to why a headstrong daughter might have fallen out so catastrophically with her mother — the actress was the ultimate control-freak, a possessive perfectionist who sought to mould those around her.
Sermak, a 22-year-old psychology gradu- ate, went to work for Davis in 1979. The 71-year- old actress gave her the job after asking her star sign and ensuring she knew how to make her breakfast, an egg boiled for exactly three minutes.
Then she began reinventing her, hiring a celebrity stylist to give Sermak a new hairstyle, and a butler to teach her etiquette after she committed the faux-pas of ‘cutting up’ her salad.
Davis personally gave her voice lessons to improve her diction, and made her change the spelling of her name from Catherine to Kathryn. ‘People will remember that spelling,’ she assured her. Davis could also be very generous, Sermak says, buying her an expensive wardrobe. ‘She never yelled, she
never screamed — at least not around me,’ she says. ‘She would curse. If she was really, really, upset, you got the silent treatment.’ She insists Davis was devoted to her children, and closest to Bede, but notes there was little physical contact.
Sermak blames Bede’s husband, Jeremy Hyman, for the deterioration in the relationship. Davis told Sermak she couldn’t respect any man that allowed his mother-in-law to bankroll his family.
She claims he would taunt her into revealing her dislike for him — and her heavy consumption of vodka, whisky and painkillers only increased their clashes.
Davis may also have been disappointed that Bede opted for domesticity so young — having her first child at 22.
She once said of her daughter: ‘Great face, great body, and smart too. If I had a fraction of what she’s got, I’d be married to a millionaire and be miles away from this f***ing town.’ so the stage was set for trouble. In 1978, the daughter of Davis’s great screen rival Joan Crawford earned millions from a tell-all book about her late mother, Mommie Dearest, which was made into a 1981 film starring Faye Dunaway. Bede decided she would write a similar book and secured a $100,000 advance. According to Sermak, Davis’s lawyer pleaded with her to wait until Davis was stronger. The actress had recently undergone a mastectomy, suffered a stroke and broken her hip. Bede allegedly insisted there was nothing in her memoir Davis would find ‘ objectionable’, and she wanted to surprise her with it on Mother’s Day. Just before publication, Bede visited her mother at a New York hotel carrying a bible. She and her husband had been converted by a travelling salesman at their Pennsylvania farm. Sermak watched Bede call on her astonished mother to repent her evil — the divorces, the drinking and the smoking — and ‘denounce the lures of Satan’. The book betrayal broke Davis’s heart, says Sermak. She accused Bede of a ‘glaring lack of loyalty and thanks for the very privileged life I feel you have been given’. Davis disinherited Bede and, after she died of breast cancer aged 81 in 1989, with Sermak at her side, her fortune was shared by her adopted son, Michael, and Sermak. Bede insists she bears no ill will towards Sermak, saying this week: ‘ She was totally dominated and manipulated by my mother, but then almost everybody was.’